ASHLAND — It started back in 1960 in an old service station along Alabama 77 where a man named Morgan Wellborn built cabinets. Today, Wellborn Cabinet Inc. is a multi-million dollar industry, providing opportunities and jobs in East Central Alabama."It's really an all-American success story," said Ben Rosser, director of human resources for the company.
Today, Morgan Wellborn’s son, Paul, who worked beside his father all his life, steers the company.
While furniture and textile industries have moved overseas, the cabinet industry is stable and growing in the United States.
Wellborn will add 200 to 250 jobs within the next year-and-a-half, part of a seven-year plan to double the current work force of 1,170.
To help prepare and train future employees, Wellborn is building a 50,000-square-foot training center.
"It's affectionately known as the barn," Rosser joked, as he drove toward the facility, which is under construction.
The huge, solid wood structure, with wood tongue-and-groove ceilings, looks much like a barn. But this "barn" will have an elevator to classrooms on the second floor.
The main floor of the building will provide a large area for hands-on training for new employees.
"It's really going to serve as a multi-purpose building," Rosser said.
The new facility will also allow Wellborn Cabinet to work with schools in developing a vocational training program for local high school students, possibly Wellborn's future employees.
"This is going to be a showcase for East Central Alabama," Rosser said, adding that the facility should be completed by the end of the year.
The new facility is just one of many large buildings on the property. Wellborn has a total of 1.3 million square feet under roof on its 870-acre site. That acreage doesn't include the 300-acre private hunting preserve — that’s right, a hunting preserve — tucked away for employees.
And that's not the only benefit the company provides workers.
Wellborn, which employs a number of workers from Talladega County, has developed a 35-acre lake on its property and is stocking it with bass and bream. The lake will come equipped with a pontoon boat. The company already has a club house along the lake for company gatherings and a small shooting clays range.
"I've been waiting for 18 years for the 18-hole golf course and the Olympic size pool," Rosser joked.
The company also has a daycare center for its employees and is planning to build a $2 million lodge overlooking the lake for visiting out-of-town clients.
Rosser said these perks are a way for the Wellborns to say "thank you" to their employees, adding that the Wellborns believe their employees made Wellborn Cabinet what it is today.
"Of course we have our challenges like any big company," Rosser said, “but it's really like one big family here."
He said it's not unusual to have couples, their children and their children's children all working at Wellborn.
Wellborn Cabinet has an impressive operation, purchasing logs from local loggers, turning those logs into lumber, and using that lumber to build solid wood cabinets.
Rosser said the company, on average, cuts 130,000 feet of lumber each week.
Wellborn maintains its own fueling station and maintenance shops for its delivery trucks. The company also uses leftover sawdust and wood chips to produce about 15 percent of its own electricity.
In addition, the company makes its own concrete for various construction projects and roads built on the property, and the company even has its own fire station on-site.
"We try to be self-sufficient," Rosser said.
